Respose to mock crit. Feedback (12/12/13).

 

Last week’s (12/12/13) mock crit. session was really useful, as the feedback and comments that we received have helped us to establish the stage in which we are at with the production process. It has also been useful in making us aware of how different audience members perceive the film as well as what they take away from it and how they interpret it. Before showing the film, Sarah and I felt a bit uneasy about presenting it, as we weren’t too sure if our idea came across strongly enough or if the footage we had gathered made the film look too busy in places. However, after showing the film, we were pleased to hear that a lot of people actually understood the basic concept behind our film and they interpreted the sense of place as we intended; not to be a physical place but as more of a sense of time, character and memory.

 

Some key pieces of feedback that we received during this session are below:

 

· Most people understood the sense of place as being not physical - instead of using a literal location we chose to try and portay the notion of time moving on, and memories fading away alongside this. People grasped this idea well and overall they generally liked the concept.

· Some people commented on the use of voiceover - they weren't sure whether this flowed well enough or if it sounded a bit too firmly scripted at times as opposed to natural. We were made aware of this and this was an area which we too were unsure about . One person in the group suggested the use of an older person as the voiceover, as they did not feel much realism to the idea – especially during the way the scene change between the child and teenager is introduced.

· Another useful suggestion was to experiment with adapting the colour grading as the person grows older throughout the different stages of the film.

· The use of the frame gained mixed reviews. A useful comment was made about whether or not different aged people should hold the frame throughout the different visual stages of growing up shown. If we have the time to complete this, this is an interesting idea to consider exploring.

· Most people in the group gave positive feedback regarding the focus pulls used within our piece. The original meaning of these was intended to be surrounding a theme of memory loss – only a few people got this, but one comment which stood out in particular made by a member of the group was that maybe we should have this as an ongoing, running theme throughout the piece, as opposed to just key parts of it being out of focus.

· We received positive comments about the lighting and length of the shots - how we held onto this for a long amount of time was mentioned in a positive way- this could be applied to other shots within the piece to create further effect.

· people recognised a sense of nostalgia within the childhood scenes. A key scene that people mentioned was the birthday cake sequence, and particularly the timing of the candles blowing out and the transition between this stage and the teenage stage worked well.

Next steps:

 

· Make sounds smoother - sort transitions out.

· Revisit the voiceover - listen back to it as a standalone piece, then together with footage and see if instead of fully removing it if we could take some parts out - instead of a running paragraph or sentence have a few key words instead  and focus on making the natural sounds sharper instead.